Changing Minds, Rules, Clock : At Deadline, All’s Fair in Lawmakers’ Games

When legislative leaders abruptly decided on Saturday to extend the current legislative session two weeks to Sept. 15, it was just one more example of the jockeying and maneuvering that go on in the Legislature.

In recent days, when it appeared that lawmakers would adjourn before Labor Day, there were numerous examples of the games legislators play under pressure, including such high jinks as changing the rules, bluffing their opponents and beating the clock by pulling the plug on it.

However, none of the gamesmanship was quite as unusual as the decision to remove the deadline pressure by postponing adjournment--giving legislators and Gov. George Deukmejian added time to resolve the major issues that still divide them.

Governor’s Threat

Knowing that the Legislature was scheduled for adjournment this weekend, Deukmejian threatened to call the lawmakers back into special session Tuesday to end stalemates over construction of a new prison in Los Angeles County and the use of state employee pension funds to restore $283 million in budget cuts.

In a special session, Deukmejian would be free to decide what issues the lawmakers would consider.

But by continuing the regular session, the Democratic legislative leaders can take up any issue they want, including $550 million worth of bond bills--most of them opposed by Deukmejian.

Taking the Credit

They also avoid the embarrassment of having the governor take political credit for forcing the lawmakers back to complete their work at a special session called only two months before the Nov. 4 election.

Asked what issues might be taken up during the newly extended session, Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) said the agenda would not be restricted to the prison and pension funds.

“You might check everything that’s been vetoed (by Deukmejian) over the past two years,” Roberti told reporters. “You could start there.”

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) said he hoped that he and other legislative leaders could meet with Deukmejian to agree on an agenda, but listed the bonds as an important concern.

The days before the decision to extend the session were filled with examples of how those who are well versed in the rules of the legislative game can use them to their advantage--or find ways to get around them.

For example, when the Senate sent the Assembly a resolution late Friday night to extend the session until midnight Saturday, it was quickly adopted by a 44-31 vote. But then minority Republicans charged that this constituted a rule change that required a two-thirds majority, or 54 votes. Brown, whose Democratic colleagues hold a 47-33 vote majority, responded that the resolution was a “new rule” that required only a simple majority, or 41 votes, for approval.

“It’s a little cute,” he quipped, “but it’s OK.” The chamber erupted in laughter.

Prison Question

Brown’s mastery of the rules was illustrated when Assemblywoman Gloria Molina (D-Los Angeles) failed to kill a bill providing for a state prison in her East Los Angeles district.

After the bill passed the Assembly, Molina immediately asked for reconsideration--a maneuver that would have given her a second chance to beat back the measure. But Brown, who favored the prison site, told her that she was out of order--even though all evening long he had routinely approved other requests to give bills a second chance at passage.

Earlier in the evening, Brown had threatened to adjourn the Assembly at midnight as originally scheduled, a move that would have automatically killed about 30 Senate bills. The Speaker was miffed because, in his view, the Senate was not treating his bills properly--and anyway, the senators had recessed and gone out on the town or home to bed while the Assembly remained in session.

Retaliatory Loss

But Brown’s threat wasn’t carried out because it would have meant the retaliatory loss of about 30 Assembly bills. One of those bills was a pending Brown measure calling for a $100-million bond issue to clean up sewage and toxic pollution along the California-Mexico border near Tijuana.

The clock was stopped--the electricity deliberately cut off--in the Assembly at 11:55 p.m., which is improper, but nobody seemed to know who did it. They never do when the clock is stopped, as it usually is on the scheduled final night of a legislative session. In the Senate, a “five-minute recess” was simply declared Friday night, then members left and reconvened the next morning.

So if you were a legislator on Saturday, it really was Friday. That’s because, according to the Legislature’s rules, the lawmakers had to adjourn for keeps at midnight Friday.

Dramatic Changes

A frequent maneuver in the closing days of a session is to make dramatic changes in a pending bill that already has been screened by numerous committees. For instance, Democrats, irritated because they were unable to win support for a major overhaul of regulations governing the insurance industry, took out their frustrations on a minor insurance reform bill by Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys).

Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) won Assembly approval for an amendment inserted into Robbins’ bill to remove the industry’s exemption from state antitrust laws. Opponents complained that they had no time at all to consider the impact of her proposal, either on insurance companies or consumers.

In the Senate, the craft of amending bills rose to a high art as lawmakers used the maneuver in an effort to bypass Sen. Daniel E. Boatwright (D-Concord), who a number of members thought was bottling up their bills in the Senate Appropriations Committee, which he chairs.

The legislators simply found ways to amend their measures into other, sometimes unrelated, bills. But Boatwright prevailed by arguing that the amendments were never given a full hearing.

In an unusual tactic to win support for another measure, one that would reduce insurance rates for senior citizens, Robbins tried to embarrass colleagues by insisting that the Senate clerk repeatedly call the names of those who had not yet voted. The maneuver failed to win him the support he wanted, and the bill was defeated.